My Professional Journey
My professional journey began about 20 years ago when I was caring for infants in a Seattle daycare. It was during a chaotic moment when I was feeding three babies at one time (yes, it can be done!) and had another baby – a six month old girl – on the floor waiting her turn. She was getting a bit fussy so I gave her the bottle to play with. She looked at me
helplessly with big brown eyes and seemed to be asking, “Well, what do you want ME to do with it?” I looked in her eyes and said, “Annie, if you hold the bottle up over your head and put it in your mouth, you can feed yourself.” And I promptly went back to attending to the babies in my arms.
What happened next blew me away and changed my life. I looked back at Annie a minute later and was amazed to see that she had followed my directions! She was indeed holding the bottle over her head and had her mouth on it. But she was still looking at me with a question in her eyes, because she had the bottom of the bottle in her mouth, not the nipple! I realized I hadn’t been specific enough, and I amended, “Oh! Annie! That’s right, but tip it over so the rubbery soft part is in your mouth! That will work better.” And she DID.
Thus I delved into the realm of what babies know, and how they know it, and found an entire field of study dedicated to educating and learning about how our earliest experience shapes who we are. I joined the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) in 1991 while working towards my B.A. specializing in prenatal and perinatal (PPN) psychology from The Evergreen State College. I became certified as a Doula, or labor support person, in 1993 and found a role not only as an advocate for parents during labor and delivery, but also for the babies themselves as they transitioned to life outside the womb.
Later, I received my Masters in Clinical Counseling specializing in PPN from The Santa Barbara Graduate Institute , further supplementing my education of how our earliest experiences shape who we are, and how we relate to the world and each other. I worked as a family services therapist at an agency in Seattle before moving to Pender Island, B.C. for four years. While there, I began building my practice, seeing both local clients as well as clients over the phone. I have helped families and individuals across the U.S. and Canada, and even as far away as Scotland and Iceland.
Throughout this journey, I have come to understand two very important things: First, that we can, as adults, identify and resolve our earliest wounds, giving us a much broader range of health and joy. And secondly, how to assist babies in ways so that they can learn to feel safe and empowered in the world. I have combined my ability to communicate with babies and my knowledge of the pregnancy and birth process with my skills and knowledge as a parent educator and support resource. In this way I can help others on a path to more fulfilling connection and joy.
Publications include:
“Fall of the Fairies”, Mothering Magazine, Mar/April 2008
“The Spirit of the Child”, Our Stories of Miscarriage: Healing With Words, Rachel Faldet, Karen Fitton, ed., Fairview Press, 1997.
“February 16″, Our Stories of Miscarriage: Healing With Words, Rachel Faldet, Karen Fitton, ed., Fairview Press, 1997.
Feel free to call me at 509-293-9530 in the U.S. or email me if you have any questions at all.
Why is my site called “From Roots to Branches?”
Trees are important to me, and I feel most at home when I am among them, so when I started noticing all the ways they relate to the concept of family, as well as individual health, the symbolism stuck with me. Although “the family tree” is the most obvious, I also believe we each have our personal tree, as well as an orchard or forest that we live among. We all connect, and the health of our roots in each system, Personal, Family, and Community, is what creates the health we look and long for.
For me this concept became conscious when my sister was in the third grade, and her class was assigned a family tree project. This was painful and distressing for my sister, because she had been adopted. Surprising to most people, the fact that she was adopted when she was just three days old didn’t make it easier for her. She knew that the family in the tree she would be working on did not share her roots. She had a different ancestry, and legal papers and the love of a nurturing family wouldn’t change that. I thought, if that’s true, then what are we to her? I still felt like family, but how did we fit for her? When she was eighteen, she began a search for her biological parents, and found them a year later. Over the last 20 years she has developed relationships with her birth mom, birth dad, half brother and sister, and a multitude of cousins and aunts and uncles. Now she has two trees in her family tree, her biological one and her adopted one.
This thinking about family trees took on a new perspective when I lived in Seattle, in the Puget Ridge Cohousing community – an intentional neighborhood of families with shared values. I was a stay home mom there, and had the support of community, other parents, and a pack of lovely children ranging in age from infant to high school. The famous phrase, “it takes a village to raise a child” couldn’t have been more true. I realized that as my daughter grew, her concept of family was different than other kids we met outside of our community. Her friends were more like siblings, some of the neighbors were like other families to her. The concept of “family” was becoming broader. This was also happening for my sister and her family. She became very close with a tight knit group of friends, nine children among them, that were more like family with siblings and aunts and uncles than a “group of friends.” I started to see that we don’t just have family trees. Sometimes, we have orchards.
When I moved to Wenatchee, WA, the “Apple Capital of the World”, and nestled myself in amongst the fruit orchards in the valley, I realized that the symbolism was important to me. My professional life had been dedicated to helping families find the root of their issues, develop strong “trunks” and branch out to their potential. But since my late adolescence, I had been investigating my own personal history as well. I journeyed into my own past, in order to grow more fully into my Being now. Profound personal change occurred most when I revisited my earliest roots – my prenatal and birth experiences – with a trained therapist. I was able to identify and resolve the negative imprints that were blocking me from my full potential.
The interconnectedness of trees symbolizing health, individually as well as in family and community, is profound for me. It is with this perspective that I serve my clients.
Feel free to call me at 509-387-1083 in the U.S. or email me if you have any questions at all.
Life Outside of Work
In my time away from work, I walk my big Landseer Newfie, Morgan, along the river, watch movies, ride my bicycle somewhat sporadically, practice yoga regularly, read and write.
My daughter -now 14 – and I have fun together too, when we are together. What I would like to do more of, but have to carve out the time, is camp, and hike. I have a dream of owning a motorcycle someday, and learning to fly a plane. I love to swim and often refer to myself as a mermaid…not just because of my grace in the water but also because as much as I love trees, the ocean is my home (I’m too far from it here in the middle of Washington state!) And if you pull up next to me at a stop light, you will probably hear me singing at the top of my lungs.